Budgeting for a fleet

[Tamuz]

There are a number of sources which attempt to give a method for calculating a world military budget, but that budget itself must inevitably be split between achieving multiple military objectives.

It is usually assumed that a world naval budget can happily be spent on shops for direct use in the line of battle, but this does not take into account patrols, fixed installations and such.

How many patrol ships would a world need to budget for? What about jump capable patrol ships for an interstellar polity?

Other considerations?

I know this will vary based on a number of factors, but can we arrive at an assumed average? In modern militaries, what is the ratio of patrol and escort craft to cruisers and battleships?

 

[kilemall]

Well usually most of the various TCS/Pocket Empires and more abstractly Imperium/Dark Nebula RU games are more DDD (Design Demolition Derby) and not necessarily a modeling of a peacetime fleet transitioning to war.


A lot of the answer to that question depends on how you view operations proceeding, how much screening and scouting counts in setting optimal approach courses and directions affect the battle, etc. etc. and of course what a given enemy does to win the intel/raiding/light action fight.


Have too few light stuff and maybe a fighter/light suicide rush does damage out of proportion to their size, or worse logistical lines are cut and fleets blinded to enemy moves and approaches. Have too much and it doesn't matter, the enemy has too much concentrated Big Firepower and defeats your forces sequentially.

 

[BRJN]

Navies, ocean or space, build based on what they think is coming. At the opening of WWII, the British Admiralty filled every slip they could with anti-submarine craft and put three battleships on the backburner; U-boats were the deadly threat to island England. In apparent contrast, the Japanese Navy after the Battle of Midway began converting everything they could, including the battleship Shinano, into aircraft carriers; because US carriers were the rising threat to them.

 

[Condottiere]

1. They are artificial constraints.

2. Technically speaking, His Majesty's Ship the Hood was an intermediate fast battleship, designed prior to and modified after the Battle of Jutland, so twenty four years old by the time she confronted the Bismarck, and certainly in need of at least a refit.

3. The German's lack of experience from the interwar years of building modern battleships, and possibly their conception of shell damage and how to stay afloat influenced the armour layout; to be fair, they thought they were going to be facing the French navy, and their priorities lay more in commerce raiding and confronting isolated elements, then a drawn out general battle, the Bismarck being an upgraded Deutschland.

4. It's threat assessment if you're defensively inclined, and power projection if you're being offensive.

 

[Selandia]

Naval budget would include not only Ship building and maintenance.

The shore establishment: operational bases, training bases and establishment -Space Academy, reserve centers, NROTC staff…-, research-development-test, suppliers assistance and conformity, logistic and paymaster branches, intelligence, top heavy operational staff, operational research, recruiting, personnel and carrer management ….and security/counter intelligence for the lot. Much overheads in that lot.

Orbital defense with OWP and ground based Wpn site are also to be included

IMHO The A and B yards are the civilian yards accessibles to travellers. There may (should) be Naval Arsenals whose yards are involved full time in military construction

Have fun
Selandia

 

[The Oz]

There are a number of sources which attempt to give a method for calculating a world military budget, but that budget itself must inevitably be split between achieving multiple military objectives.

It is usually assumed that a world naval budget can happily be spent on shops for direct use in the line of battle, but this does not take into account patrols, fixed installations and such.

How many patrol ships would a world need to budget for? What about jump capable patrol ships for an interstellar polity?

Other considerations?

I know this will vary based on a number of factors, but can we arrive at an assumed average? In modern militaries, what is the ratio of patrol and escort craft to cruisers and battleships?

You might try looking at some historical examples. Find the total tonnage of the British Royal Navy in 1900, say, broken down (if possible) into 'combat' and 'patrol' categories, and then find the total British merchant tonnage that fleet was supposed to protect.

Then work it backwards: determine the size of the merchant fleet a given TRAVELLER polity has to protect, and you can make a guess at the tonnage needed to do that.

 

[Pyromancer]

My shorthand is that any given navy has ten times its yearly budget in ships. So a Navy with a yearly budget of 65,000 MCr would have ships worth (if they were new) 650,000 MCr. What kind of ships depends on circumstances.

 

[flykiller]

IMHO The A and B yards are the civilian yards accessibles to travellers. There may (should) be Naval Arsenals whose yards are involved full time in military construction

sure. but tcs reasonably defined naval construction capacities in terms of population. combined with tech capabilities this results in largely identical limitations as A/B and high pop and high tech very much tend to track (at least in the spinward marches). imtu I add that industrial worlds may produce double tonnage, and this still results in 2/3 of tcs-defined naval funding being unexpendable in naval construction. so I ignore the funding and just track the pop/tech/A/B capacities.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I found budgeting to be pointless - if shipbuilding is in fact limited to class A and B yards then the imperium has more money than it can spend. the limiting factor is shipyard space.

I disagree.

Take Rhylanor for example. With an A starport and 8 billion population it dominates its subsector. According to TCS it would have a naval budget of 500 × 0.9 × 8×10⁹ = 3.6 TCr per year. And a yard capacity of 8×10⁹ × 0.9 / 1000 = 7.2 MDt.

It could have a total navy worth 36 TCr or perhaps 36 MDt. Presuming an average build time of four years it could build its entire navy in 20 years. With an average replacement rate of 40 years it would only need half the available yard capacity to continually renew the navy.

As far as I can see yard capacity is not a problem, at least in peacetime.

 

[chipla]

As far as I can see yard capacity is not a problem, at least in peacetime.

I wonder how that would change in a wartime replacement situation.

If Rhylanor’s fleet engaged in a fleet action and had to replace even a small percentage of their forces they might not necessarily have 4 years in which to do so. At which point does the 3I (or any other multi-stellar polity) start to make warships (or parts thereof) at Class C ports or seizing civilian shipyards.

 

[warwizard]

My shorthand is that any given navy has ten times its yearly budget in ships. So a Navy with a yearly budget of 65,000 MCr would have ships worth (if they were new) 650,000 MCr. What kind of ships depends on circumstances.

Is that for a wet navy operating in a corrosive sea? I suspect that the design life of a space going naval asset would depend on the advance of technology, is it too outdated? rather than is it too rusted.

 

[warwizard]

Perhaps a better way of looking at this is found in the island sector campaign rules, an active ship consumes funding equal to 10% of it's build cost each year, and if put into storage, 1%. That would give some where around 9 years income worth of active ships, and an additional 10 years income worth of reserve ships. A polity that designs their ships to have a much lower operational cost could deploy greater bang for the buck, so to speak.

 

[magmagmag]

Over 10 years ago, I tried calcurate using Mega Traveller data.
In the Spinward March, over 200 billion people lives and spend 92Tcr/year for Navy, using cr500/1person rate.

Maintenance cost is too high, so we cannot use all money for shipbuilding.

http://kemkem1.com/TRAVELLER/hukkou/fleets/fleet.htm

 

[mike wightman]

Wages, pensions, training costs.

Spare parts, maintainance, consumables, fuel.

Bases, accommodation, food and sundries, use of civilian transport infrastructure.

R&D

'Drydocks', depots, construction yards.

Now lets talk about ship construction...

 

[Tiikeri]

A couple of thoughts

Calculate world gdp in Mcr

Decide what percentage of world gdp the govt will spend on navy. I think nato treaty requires iike 2% of gdp spent on defense or something.

Look at rl historical info to see how us navy or uk navy or ussr navy divided their naval budget abd divide the worlds naval budget by the same proportions.

Look at real world equivalents to guesstimate how much a naval shipyard costs, like long beach ca or the one in virginia. Convert the cost to traveller credits somehow.

Look at the relationship between budget and number of ships in example navy to get a basic notion of what a certain amount of funding will buy, then apply the proportions to your worlds navy.

If there are traveller costs somewhere for bases, shipyards, crew costs etc, then use that, but if not try making loose comparisons from rl proportions.

 

[flykiller]

Wages, pensions, training costs (etc)

bingo.

With an average replacement rate of 40 years it would only need half the available yard capacity to continually renew the navy.

don't forget shipyard space devoted to annual overhauls ....

start to make warships (or parts thereof) at Class C ports or seizing civilian shipyards

that would be like telling la guardia or los angeles international, "hey, build some f18s" - they're just not set up for it.

 

[Condottiere]

I think the cost of operating a modern warship is about twenty percent of purchase, and probably the same for modern jet fighters, especially if you add in the ground crew and facilities.

There's a reason why Littoral Combat Ships were built, and Cessna thinks there's a market for their privately developed subsonic Scorpion jet fighter.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

don't forget shipyard space devoted to annual overhauls ....

... And a yard capacity of 8×10⁹ × 0.9 / 1000 = 7.2 MDt.

It could have a total navy worth 36 TCr or perhaps 36 MDt. Presuming an average build time of four years it could build its entire navy in 20 years. With an average replacement rate of 40 years it would only need half the available yard capacity to continually renew the navy.

36 MDt ships would take 36 × 2 weeks / 52 weeks/year ≈ 1.4 MDt yard capacity, if it even needs any yard capacity. By RAW only building, refitting, and repairing ships take yard capacity.

Annual maintenance is a non-issue.

 

[flykiller]

Annual maintenance is a non-issue.

yeah, ok, if it's free.

 

[chipla]

that would be like telling la guardia or los angeles international, "hey, build some f18s" - they're just not set up for it.

Fair point - though I suspect either of those airports could (given material) stick rocket pods or other weapons on a civilian jet (with no promises about flight handling) which if the us lost a significant proportion of their fighter arsenal might have to do for second line deployment.


Regarding budgeting how long spaceships last is probably a point to consider. The tech advances in the 3I seem somewhat slow (given we’ve pretty much gone up a tech level in my lifetime and the 3I seems to have advanced two(ish) in 1100 years. Avoiding accidents and war a ship that doesn’t enter atmosphere can probably last a century or so given the lack of corrosion in a vacuum. If there are no major strategic changes in that period that necessitate new weapons or designs navies can save money on replacement builds (or maintain a large reserve with less degradation)